


the long way around

by waveridden



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M, Quantum Leap fusion, Stephen King References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25709959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveridden/pseuds/waveridden
Summary: “Local do-gooder, Dr. Edward Kaspbrak,” Richie says in his old-timey-radio voice. “Not content with travelling wildly through time, he has committed to helping those around him, even when they’re strangers at a gas station! Good god, would you look at the man?”“I am begging you to shut up,” Eddie says.A Quantum Leap AU.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 19
Kudos: 62





	the long way around

**Author's Note:**

> You don't need to know anything about the early-90s cult classic Quantum Leap to read this, but you should watch it anyways, because it's pretty fun. All my love to Lee and Tam, for pre-reading and listening to me whine about this all coming together. And to my cat Buster, for keeping me company while I wrote and crashing my computer more than once.
> 
> Content warnings: memory loss, isolation, a couple vague references to Eddie's mom, and that's it! Have fun.

“Today’s a celebration, Eds,” Richie announces. “Biggest day of the year, happening as we speak.”

Eddie barely spares a second to glance around to make sure nobody's within earshot before he turns to Richie, trying to project as much skepticism as possible. “And why’s that?”

Richie seems completely undeterred by Eddie’s lack of excitement. “Because, my dearest doctor, today marks two years of you living life on the lam.”

“Two years?” Eddie repeats in disbelief. “I know my sense of time is a little fried, but this has to be a joke.”

Richie shakes his head, beaming. “Sorry, Eds-”

“Would you quit fucking calling me-”

“-but I’m deathly serious. We have been partners in crime for two whole years.”

“Huh,” Eddie says. “And I haven’t killed you yet?”

Richie swats a hand at Eddie, clipping through his arm without making contact. “I’m wounded, Dr. K. Don’t you know I’m your closest friend?”

“More like my only friend.”

“Or perhaps I’m just a figment of your imagination,” he says in a sinister horror-movie voice. It’s actually one of the better voices that he does, but unfortunately for him, Eddie fucking hates it. “A hallucination, keeping you from becoming too boring and complacent-”

“Go fuck yourself,” Eddie says cheerfully. Richie must be in a mood - whether good or bad, Eddie honestly can’t tell - because he just smiles. “Also, you couldn’t have dressed up for our anniversary, you fucking schlub?”

Richie makes a wounded noise. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

Eddie gives him an unimpressed look. They’ve hashed this out dozens of times and Eddie already knows that they’re going to hash it out dozens more. He doesn’t remember much about when and where he’s from, but he knows instinctively that the way Richie dresses is weird. It’s fucking garish, all bright colors and bold patterns that completely clash. He dresses like he’s thirteen and has just discovered that he’s allowed to be ugly if he wants to, and so he wants to just because he’s allowed. It’s infuriating.

Richie just shakes his head and tuts at Eddie. “You need a sense of adventure,” he says, and then switches to a doctor voice that Eddie knows in his heart of hearts only exists to mock him. “Dr. Kaspbrak, I’m prescribing you 200 cc’s of fun, stat. Do you remember how to have fun? Did you read about that in a textbook?”

“I’m not a medical doctor, asshole,” Eddie says. “You told me I’m a physicist.”

“And now I’m telling you that, in terms of physics-” Richie reaches a hand out but doesn’t clap it on Eddie’s shoulder, a motion only aborted after it’s nearly complete. “You’re gonna die if you don’t loosen up.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I’m plenty loose already,” he says sweetly. “You fucking jackass.”

Richie opens his mouth, probably to say something lewd and horrible that Eddie’s will to have to eviscerate him for, but his eyes flit over Eddie’s shoulder. “Company,” he says regretfully. “Don’t you worry, Dr. Eds, I’ll hang around and make sure you don’t get too silly with it. Wouldn’t want you to pull a muscle.”

It takes all the strength in Eddie’s body not to roll his eyes. Instead he turns around to give an even-keeled smile to the woman who’s approaching him. “Miss Gibney,” he says. “What can I do for you?”

Richie doesn’t leave. This is not something that Eddie has any reason to know. Richie’s not a physical presence, he doesn’t make noise when he moves, he can’t touch Eddie. There’s no reason that Eddie should know where Richie is.

But he always knows. He knows that Richie is pacing in circles while he talks to Holly. He can already imagine the sheepish expression on his face once Eddie turns around and asks if he can’t just stand fucking still for ten minutes.

Eddie pays a lot of attention to Richie. He has for two years now. He wishes he knew why.

#

Everything Eddie Kaspbrak knows about himself, he learned from someone else.

Eddie is not from 1989, or 1997, or whatever year he happens to be in at any given moment. Actually, the last day that Eddie existed as himself was sometime in the 2010s. He’s a physicist and maybe a couple of other things. And he invented fucking time travel, and immediately fucked himself over with it because the machine didn’t work right, and he was stuck ping-ponging through space and time.

Richie had tried to explain it, with an obnoxious amount of confidence for someone who clearly didn’t know anything about string theory. He’d said it was like putting a donut in a food processor.

“Your life is the donut,” he’d said, ignoring Eddie’s disbelieving expression. “Beginning and end, all looped together in a particular order. But you put it in there and you crush it up, and then you’ve just got crumbs. It doesn’t matter if the crumb that says July was originally next to the crumb that said New York, or the crumb that said 2015. Now those crumbs are in an order that put you in New York in July of 2015. Everything’s in the wrong order, so as long as you have the right crumbs, you can go anywhere.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Eddie had answered. Quite saliently, he thought. “That’s absolute bullshit, are you kidding?”

Unfortunately, every conversation Eddie has had with the other project leads has only confirmed that Richie’s donut comparison was the right idea. He has every assurance that they’re trying to figure out how to bring him back, but it’s hard when he’s busy jumping from crumb to crumb.

And then there’s the part that none of them can explain: he’s not jumping as himself.

“You’re leaping between people who already exist,” Richie had told him the second or third time it happened. Eddie can still see it clearly; he had leaped into someone fishing on a lake and nearly lost his mind. “You’re not… stable enough to exist as yourself, I guess. So when you look in the mirror and see someone else, it’s because for a little while, you are that someone else. You’re possessing them for a few days.”

“Jesus.” Eddie swiped one of the oars through the water, with barely enough force to move the boat. “I’m just… assuming different people’s lives?”

“Bingo. And if anyone thinks there’s something wrong, Maturin can’t get you out.”

“What the fuck is Maturin? Why’s it called that?”

“You named it,” Richie muttered. Eddie stared, and he explained, “It’s the supercomputer that controls everything. You were the lead on that project. You always said that the best case scenario would be if the computer was smarter than you. But now you’re gone, and the computer is way fucking smarter than everyone who was left.”

“Don’t you have a giant fucking team?”

“Yeah, and everyone does something, but you were our quantum guy. You’re the one who explained all of this to me. I’m just-”

“Just?” Eddie raised an eyebrow at him.

Richie grinned, barely on the wrong side of insincere. “Just the guy keeping you alive, baby. As long as you’re leaping around and I’m in this room, I can see you and you can see me. So get used to it, Eds.”

“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie had answered, which he recognizes in hindsight was the wrong thing to say.

Richie is around almost constantly, just like he’d said. He visits Eddie nearly every day. He was the one there the day that Eddie had his whole crisis about morality and time leaping - the one who helped him decide that there’s nothing wrong with a little meddling if it helps the people he leaps into. It makes Eddie feel better, knowing that he has something to do. And Richie had seemed pleased with the decision.

According to Beverly, Richie is the only non-scientist on the team; he officially handles their communications and unofficially handles all their office politics. Also, according to Beverly, he and Eddie were close before the leaping started. That part is frustrating, because Eddie doesn’t really remember any of his life before leaping, but Richie seems hard to forget.

“Don’t tell him that,” Bev said dryly. “It’ll go straight to his head.”

On Richie’s rare days off, Bev and Stan are Eddie’s most common visitors. Part of that is because it’s their jobs - they have the Herculean tasks of trying to supervise Eddie’s medical and mental health, respectively - but it’s clear that part of it is because they like him. Eddie’s pretty sure he was friends with everyone on the team, before he disappeared.

It drives him fucking insane that he can’t remember. The only one who really knows that is Stan; not even Richie knows how goddamn angry Eddie is that his life has been stolen out from under him. He hadn’t even remembered his own name until Richie saw him for the first time. He’d been fumbling his way around a military base, and Richie had appeared and said “Eddie?” in a ragged voice that Eddie still thinks about when he can’t sleep.

But Eddie knows a few things. Just a few, and he holds them close to his chest, repeats them like a mantra. His name is Eddie Kaspbrak. He’s a physicist, and he ruined his own life via his life’s work. He was born in 1976, and he can’t go back in time any further than that. He doesn’t like mushrooms. He wants to help people.

And, on the particularly sleepless nights, he adds one item to that list: Richie, his best and only friend, is hiding something from him. And he can’t figure out why.

#

Leaping is not a physical process. It’s not like getting hit with lightning or a bus or anything like that. In theory, it’s an instant, seamless transition. But all of his sensory stimuli change in that instant. He goes from inside to outside, from sitting to standing, from one body to another in the blink of an eye. It’s seamless, sure, but it’s also hugely fucking jarring.

Which is why it’s a problem when it doesn’t happen this time.

It takes Eddie a second to even realize that something’s happening. He opens his eyes without remembering closing them, and there is somebody standing in front of him.

“You’re getting there,” the person in front of Eddie says, and Eddie opens his mouth to ask what the fuck is going on, but then he’s somewhere else.

He’s in the woods, already walking, bringing up the rear of a group of park rangers. A couple of people in front of him are calling out a name; when Eddie listens he can tell that it’s Trisha. Instinctively, he starts calling for her too. It’s easier to blend in when he’s doing what everyone else is doing.

“Eddie,” Richie says in relief. He’s keeping pace with Eddie as he moves through the forest.

It’s always dangerous talking to Richie when there are other people around, considering that everyone around Eddie will think he’s talking to himself. But this is enough of an exception that Eddie glances at him and says, voice low, “What happened?”

“We’re not sure yet,” Richie admits. “Normally when you leap it’s instantaneous, maybe a three second lag before Maturin finds you again. Never long enough to worry.”

“Well, what was it this time?”

“Closer to ten minutes.”

Eddie looks at him more sharply than he intends. “What?”

One of the rangers in front of him turns around and eyes him. “You see something, Morgan?”

“No,” Eddie calls back. “Thought I did, sorry.”

She gives him a curt nod and turns around.

Richie elbows him, ignoring the fact that his elbow clips through Eddie’s ribs. “Gotta be careful, Eds,” he murmurs. It doesn’t have the cadence of a joke. Eddie frowns, but Richie ignores it. “Bev’s coming in tomorrow to give you a checkup for side effects. And Bill says that unless it happens again we can write it off as a fluke.”

“What if it happens again?” Eddie murmurs, barely loud enough to hear.

He’s actually not sure if Richie hears, because he’s too busy giving Eddie a once-over. “Park ranger,” he says appreciatively. “I love a man in uniform.”

This is unfair, because Eddie wants more than anything in the fucking world to tell him to go fuck himself, loudly and colorfully. But he can’t, because he’s surrounded by Ranger Morgan’s coworkers. It’s truly his fucking curse. He has to settle for the nastiest glare that he can imagine, and rest safely in his assurance that Richie sees him.

Unfortunately, Richie just looks delighted by this. “Bad cop, huh?” he says. “I can work with that.”

Eddie does not start shouting at him. But it’s a close fucking thing.

#

It takes Eddie another couple weeks - a few days after Trisha McFarland is home safe, a handful of days as a carpenter, and a truly nightmarish stint as a horse trainer - to realize that he has a question.

“Richie,” he says one day, when he’s by himself under the guise of going for a long walk. It’s an excuse that works most of the time, and it’s a good way to get time with just Richie.

“Yes, Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie says. He doesn’t walk so much as bounce. It’s the most annoying fucking thing, and any other day Eddie would snipe at him for it. But today, he has a mission.

“I’ve been leaping for two years,” he says slowly.

“Oh, good, you remember our conversation.”

“Shut up, dickwad, I’m trying to make a point.”

Richie gives a dramatic flourish, presumably one that means that Eddie can speak.

Eddie sighs. “Did I miss your birthday?”

Richie stops walking. “What?”

Eddie squints at him. Richie, who is always moving, who is always expressing something, looks absolutely fucking stunned.

“Birthday,” Eddie says slowly. “They happen once a year? Everyone’s got one? I don’t know about you but I’ve had a couple.”

“Right,” Richie says slowly. “But I don’t - do you even know what day today is?”

“Well, by my watch it’s-” Eddie makes a show of looking at his wrist. “Hm, I think my watch is broken.”

“You don’t say.”

“Something wrong with one of the springs inside, let me just-” he taps his wrist a couple times, and then his middle finger pops out. “Well, would you look at that. Time for you to go fuck yourself.”

Richie peers at Eddie flipping him the bird. “That was a lot of setup and not a lot of payoff.”

“You’d know something about bad payoff,” Eddie says sweetly, and Richie grins at him. “Quit avoiding the fucking question, why don’t you want me to know when your birthday is?”

“It’s, uh.” Richie clears his throat. “Eds, c’mon, you know there are some things that we decided you shouldn’t know.”

Eddie is aware of the secret list. Bill explained it early on. Eddie is not supposed to know too much about his parents, despite the fact that he remembered his mother a couple months ago. He’s not supposed to remember any spouse or kids, old jobs, coworkers, anything like that, because it would serve as a distraction to his ability to do the research. The problem is, he also doesn’t really remember the research.

“Well, yeah,” Eddie says, and he can’t keep the annoyance out of his voice. Stupid fucking rules, saying Eddie can’t know himself. “But what does your birthday have to do with that?”

“Classified,” Richie says immediately.

“What the fuck, no it’s not!”

“Uh, I’ve got higher clearance than you for the first time in our lives, and I’m here to tell you that that shit is under lock and key, baby.”

“It’s your birthday! I know when Mike’s birthday is, why not yours?”

“National secret, Eds.”

“Go fuck yourself-”

“It’s for the greater good-”

Eddie throws his arms up. “It’s a day! There are only so many of them, I could guess it if I tried hard enough.”

Richie arches an eyebrow at him. “You think you can guess my birthday?”

Eddie leans in and looks at him, really scrutinizing him. His hair looks like shit. Richie’s never said so, but given how often he’s around, Eddie’s pretty much convinced that he lives in the room that allows him to talk to Eddie. Once a week or so someone else will be on babysitting duty, and then Richie will be back, looking more rested and clean-shaven. Eddie suspects this is the end of one of those cycles. Richie’s been here a lot lately.

He squints, considering his options, and then says with a lot of false confidence, “June 29.”

And because he’s already looking at Richie head on, he gets a front row seat to the split second of naked, blindsided shock on Richie’s face. Like Eddie hit him in the head with a fucking bowling ball.

“Did I get it?” he asks, delighted. That reaction has to mean something.

“Nope,” Richie says. He’s scrambling to recover, as much as Richie ever scrambles. He’s slick in strange ways, projecting the most confidence Eddie has ever seen someone try and project. “Wrong.”

Eddie frowns. He could’ve sworn. “Well, is June 29 my birthday or something?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot your birthday again.”

He has to think hard about that, sifting through the gaps in his brain. “September… 4th?”

“3rd.” Richie gives him a tired, surprisingly brittle smile. “Keep thinking, Eds. I’ll see you later.”

“Wait,” Eddie says. He’s not sure what’s going on, but suddenly it feels like he’s done something wrong. “Are you-”

“Gotta go,” Richie says. “I’ll send someone in to keep an eye on you, don’t worry.” And before Eddie can even so much as open his mouth, Richie vanishes.

Eddie stares at the space where Richie was a moment ago. “June 29th,” he repeats, and something knots low in his stomach. It’s something about that day. It has to be.

#

Eddie’s next leap goes wrong.

It’s the same thing as before. He can tell he’s about to leap from somewhere to somewhere else, but then instead of being somewhere he’s nowhere. And Eddie’s not supposed to be nowhere.

But this time he’s ready. As soon as he opens his eyes, he says “What the fuck’s going on?”

“Your neural pathways are trying to repair themselves,” says the person in front of Eddie. “It’s difficult for your brain to do while you’re occupying someone else’s quantum space, so it has to be done here.”

“Where is here?”

The person in front of Eddie smiles and says, very gently, “That’s my job to know.”

“It’s my job to fucking find out,” Eddie snaps. “Is this- is this good? Neural pathways, that’s a good sign? You said repairing?”

“I’ll tell you next time,” says the person in front of Eddie, and then in the blink of an eye Eddie is in a pickup truck, driving at 85 miles an hour on the highway.

The first thing Eddie does is curse loudly and prolifically, and with some feeling. The second thing he does is check to make sure that he’s alone in the truck, which he is, thank god. The third thing he does is check the time, because at any minute someone from back home is going to come find him.

And the fourth thing is - listen, Eddie likes driving. It’s relaxing. Going 85 on the highway with no idea where he’s going is his idea of a dream. He can’t stop to find out who he is, and there’s no GPS in the car, but there is a paper map in the passenger seat with a destination circled. Eddie pulls over for exactly long enough to make sure that he’s going the right way and then he just drives. It’s quiet. It’s nice.

Twenty-three minutes after Eddie pops back into existence, Mike materializes in the passenger seat and says “Hi, Eddie.”

“Hi, Mike,” Eddie says, and takes a deep breath. “You got questions?”

“We got lots,” Mike says apologetically. He’s the computer engineer for the project, the one who took all of Eddie’s supposed supercomputer dreams and made them into a reality. They don’t talk often. Eddie thinks Mike feels guilty about what happened to him, which is fucking stupid, because Eddie’s the one who climbed into the accelerator before it was ready to be activated. “You okay?”

“Just peachy.” He flexes his fingers on the steering wheel. “If someone could help me figure out who I am at some point, that would be great, but this is the most relaxed I’ve been in months.”

Mike smiles. “Good,” he murmurs. “That’s good. Do you know how long you were gone?”

“It felt like about one minute for me, but I’m assuming it was longer for you. I’ve been back for-” he glances at the clock on the dashboard. “Twenty-four minutes and counting.”

Mike makes a note of that somewhere. “You were missing from all of our scanning for fifty-seven minutes,” he says quietly. “We had you in 1982, and then you were gone. Has this ever happened before?”

“Only once, and Richie said it was closer to ten minutes. What year am I in?”

“2003.” Mike gives him a dry smile. “Welcome to the right millennium.”

“Terrific,” Eddie says, because he truly does not give a shit what millennium he’s in anymore if it’s still the wrong year. He just misses smartphones. And Thai food. “Who was I talking to earlier?”

“Talking to? Was somebody in here before me?”

“While I was gone.”

Mike’s eyes go wide. “You were still experiencing something while you were gone?”

“Yeah, I was in a…” Eddie waves a hand. “I don’t fucking know, but I was talking to someone who said that I was repairing my neural pathways.”

“That’s Bill talk,” Mike says instantly. He’s trying so hard to be neutral, and Eddie’s not good at reading Mike, but he seems excited. This has to be a good sign. “I’ll send him in soon. And-”

“And Bev, yeah,” Eddie finishes, and then pauses. “Is- is Richie around?”

Mike snorts. Eddie narrows his eyes. “What’s so fucking funny, asshole?”

“Is Richie around,” Mike repeats teasingly. “Come on, Eddie, take a wild guess.”

Richie has been avoiding Eddie since the whole birthday thing. He’s been trying to be subtle about it, but Richie has never been subtle about a fucking thing. It’s not a coincidence that Bill spent the whole day after the birthday thing with Eddie - Bill, who is allegedly in charge of the whole goddamn project and doesn’t have whole free days to spend with Eddie outside of an emergency. Any other day, Eddie would know what Richie is doing, but today? He’s not so sure.

“He’s at home catching up on sleep like he should be,” Eddie says flatly, and Mike barks out a laugh. “Is he in the room?”

“He is, actually.” Mike turns and looks at something that Eddie can’t see. “Do you wanna say hi, or are you waiting until you guys have some special alone time?”

“He can keep waiting,” Eddie says, and Mike laughs again. “Can he hear me?”

“Not right now.”

“Tell him…” he pauses. God, what the fuck does he want to say? What does he want Mike to know? “Tell him that I’m going to be driving all night, so if he wants to pull his head out of his ass and keep me company he’s more than welcome to.”

Mike immediately turns to someone Eddie can’t see. “He says he misses you.”

“Asshole,” Eddie snaps, even though it’s true. He tries to swat at Mike’s shoulder, and ignores the familiar stomach drop when his hand goes straight through.

Mike ignores him, busy looking up at Richie. After a second he rolls his eyes in a truly dramatic fashion and turns to Eddie. “He says he would be delighted to keep you company,” he says, and for a split second Eddie considers asking what Richie actually said. “But first I need Bill in here to do the neuroscience thing, and Stan and Bev, and at that point Ben’s going to feel left out unless he comes to say hi. So Richie will be around in the evening.”

“Evening,” Eddie repeats. “Got it.”

The rest of his day alternates between stretches by himself and stretches with someone quizzing him. Bill asks a thousand questions about the person who was with Eddie - where were they? what did they look like? what did they sound like? what does Eddie mean, he doesn’t remember? - before finally relenting and letting Eddie rest. Stan goes through a quick psych eval and then leaves Eddie alone. Ben does show up for a little while, and he talks about normal things that Eddie can’t quite parse, new car models and hockey teams, but the conversation peters out before long.

Bev is the only one who lingers, which is fine by Eddie. Bev is the kind of person who Eddie can sit in silence with. She asks all of her symptom questions, which is about all she can do without being able to touch him for a check-up, and then curls up in the passenger seat of the truck and watches him.

Eddie glances over. “What?”

“You used to go for drives a lot,” Beverly says. Eddie blinks in surprise. She’s always been the most open about what he was like before, but this feels… different. “I don’t know if you remember, but it’s what you would do to clear your head. I can’t even tell you how many times you would hit a roadblock with the project and then go drive around for a while and come back with six new answers to try out.”

“It’s been relaxing, getting to do this,” Eddie says honestly. “I haven’t had the chance to do it much lately, but my head feels completely clear.”

Bev nods quietly. When he looks over again she’s smiling. “I’d go with you sometimes,” she says, and his heart stops. “There are different moods of wanting to be alone, you know? Sometimes you wanted to be by yourself, but sometimes you wanted to be by yourself with someone else. You’d talk out loud while you were driving.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. A lot of the time you weren’t even talking to me. It was like you were having a whole conversation by yourself, and I was just the audience.”

“It sounds like you’re talking about someone else,” Eddie murmurs. “Like it’s a whole other person. I don’t remember being that person.”

“I know, but it’s still you.”

“Is it?”

She makes a face at him. “Don’t get maudlin on me. If I took out the windshield of this car would it still be a car?”

“It would be a fucking death trap, Bev!”

“But it would still be a car!” She laughs. “If it had- god, I’m not enough of a car person for this, is it too late to change metaphors?”

“Yes, it’s too fucking late!” Eddie exclaims. Bev laughs again, and Eddie can’t help but laugh with her. “You made your bed, you have to lie in it here, finish your fucking car metaphor.”

“God, fine, okay.” She brushes her hair behind her ear and thinks very seriously for a moment before gesturing around the truck. “Okay, look at this thing. It is very clearly a car. If someone filled the engine with maple syrup, it would still be a car. It would take a little extra work to drive it home, but you could still fix it. Right?”

“Sure.”

“So just because you don’t remember the same things doesn’t mean you’re a different person.”

“It feels like I am sometimes,” Eddie says before he can stop himself. “You know, like someone put maple syrup in my engine and I don’t work right anymore.”

Bev just shrugs. “Sure, maybe,” she says. “At least for now. But there are little things that make it you. Did you know that you keep looking for your sunglasses?”

He blinks. “What?”

She waves a hand over the center console. “Your car, the one I’ve been in, has a little cubby right here. You keep your sunglasses in it. You’ve reached for the cubby half a dozen times in the past twenty minutes. You might not know that you remember, but I promise that you remember.”

Eddie swallows, throat feeling thick. He’d noticed the motion but hadn’t thought twice about why. “Thanks, Bev,” he says softly. “That’s- thank you.”

She smiles at him. “I know you think this will be the rest of your life,” she says. “But I don’t. I’ll see you again one day. And you can take me for a drive and tell me about physics problems, and it’ll be like you were here the whole time. Because you are here.”

Eddie nods, too choked up to answer. Bev must be able to tell because she doesn’t say anything for the rest of the ride, just hums along to the radio. He thinks that she wants to hug him, but instead she smiles, whispers a goodbye, and disappears as he pulls into a rest stop.

It’s a quick break, grabbing something to eat and washing his hands furiously, but Eddie keeps turning over Bev’s words in his head. Sometimes it feels like there are two Eddies, the one that everyone expects and the one that he actually is. But what Bev said makes sense. It’s still him. Both of them are him. He just has something different inside him right now.

When Eddie gets back to the car, Richie is already sprawled in the passenger seat, loose-limbed and lazy. He grins up at Eddie when he opens the door. “Did you get me a coke?”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says easily. “You don’t drink coke.”

“No, I don’t,” Richie says. Eddie glances over, looking for… for something, for a sign of surprise or any reaction at all, but whatever was going on a few days ago seems to be gone now. He just smiles up at Eddie. “Where’re we going, Eds?”

“Let me check.” Eddie reaches for the map, which he moved to the dashboard at some point because he felt weird about having to reach through Stan to look at it. “Somewhere in New Brunswick, I guess.”

“Ooh, crossing the border. Where are we now?”

“You don’t know?”

“Of course I know. I’m quizzing you, gotta keep you sharp.”

Eddie opens his mouth, and then has to close it again so he doesn’t say something stupid. Something like _I think you’re here so you don’t lose track of me again._ Maybe that’s the other Eddie, trying to speak through him. But he’s sure as fuck not going to say that.

Richie just keeps smiling over at him, so he folds the map back up on the dashboard. “New Jersey,” he says. “Not sure why I’m heading north yet.”

“It’s going to be a long drive.”

“Then I’m lucky I’ve got you to entertain me,” Eddie shoots back. It might be a mistake, judging by the way Richie’s face lights up. Or it might be the right thing to say. Eddie’s just fucking relieved that Richie‘s looking at him again.

#

They sleep at a rest stop in Connecticut. There’s something familiar about the motions they go through, something much more specific than anything Eddie remembers, but he doesn’t dare ask about it.

Richie ends up lying across the front seats. Because he’s technically not real, the center console juts through his torso. Eddie ends up in the backseat, staring at the back of the driver’s seat. Richie’s hologram head is there, on the other side. Close to him.

“Hey,” Richie says, when Eddie is nearly asleep.

“Asshole,” Eddie says by way of greeting.

Richie huffs out a quiet laugh, so quiet that Eddie thinks he might’ve hallucinated it. “I’m glad we found you again.”

Eddie presses his head into his makeshift pillow and thinks about it. Generally speaking, when Richie’s not there, Eddie knows that he’s still out there somewhere, strutting around and bothering whoever else is in the lab. Even on the rare day that he’s not camped out in the imaging chamber, he’s still present.

But there’s not always a guarantee that Eddie is out there. Eddie leaps around and has to be found, at least once or twice a week. Eddie went missing for over an hour today, and Richie had barely been talking to him before that because of that birthday shit, and he can’t- he can’t imagine that. Richie has been keeping him sane for the past two years, and Eddie doesn’t know what he would do if he just fucking vanished.

“Me too,” Eddie says, very, very softly. “I know you were worried, but I always-”

Richie snores. Very fucking loudly.

“Great,” Eddie says. “Awesome.”

The thing is, Eddie’s not stupid. He’s confused and he’s amnesiac, sure, but he’s not a fucking idiot. He knows that he loves Richie. But there’s a whole other Eddie out there that’s practically a stranger, and it’s impossible to untangle that person from himself. He doesn’t know which feelings are his and what are residual and if the difference even matters. It might not. But he’s not going to take that risk. Not with this.

Even so, there’s something comforting about the sound of Richie breathing in the front seat. One of his hands is flopped through the backseat, towards Eddie. He can only see the fingertips. It’s a hologram. It’s not real.

So it doesn’t matter when Eddie strokes his thumb across the pads of his fingers, trying to see if that trips any memories. It doesn’t matter that he can’t see if Richie has a wedding ring. It doesn’t matter that he closes his eyes to the sound of Richie snoring quietly and falls so soundly asleep that he forgets he was ever worried.

It’s not real, Eddie thinks in between breaths. It’s not really Eddie, anyways, right? So it doesn’t matter.

#

The next day they drive up through Connecticut and Rhode Island together, bickering the whole way. Eddie plays shitty music on the radio because it drives Richie even crazier than it drives him, and Richie makes someone bring him a giant fucking bottle of soda so he can try to burp in Eddie’s face. It’s the most fucking annoying thing in the world.

They’re most of the way through Boston when Eddie has to stop for gas. Richie’s in the middle of a bit about the different types of potato chips he ate in the 80s, but he stops. “What’s here?”

“What?” Eddie says. He’s craning his neck, trying to figure out where the fuck the entrance of this gas station is. “Fucking gasoline, Richie, what are you talking about?”

“Is this your sense of quantum justice tingling?”

“No,” Eddie says, and then turns his head one degree to the left and catches sight of a guy standing outside the gas station with his thumb up. “Fuck. Maybe?”

“Local do-gooder, Dr. Edward Kaspbrak,” Richie says in his old-timey-radio voice. “Not content with travelling wildly through time, he has committed to helping those around him, even when they’re strangers at a gas station! Good god, would you look at the man?”

“I am begging you to shut up,” Eddie says. “Did we ever figure out my name?”

“Thomas McCourt, and no, we still don’t know why you’re heading to Canada.”

“Terrific,” Eddie mutters. “What do I say when he asks me?”

“Lie, dumbass,” Richie says patiently. “Who’s going to catch you? Just don’t stop and you won’t meet anyone you know.”

“I fucking hate you,” Eddie says. “With a passion. The kind of passion that is normally reserved for soulmates, that’s how much I hate you.”

“You wound me, Eds.” Richie grins at him. “You want me to get lost so you don’t look like a crazy person when you talk to a hologram in front of your new friend?”

“No,” Eddie says without thinking. Richie blinks, surprised, and Eddie… doesn’t know how to recover this into something normal. “Camp out in the backseat or shit if you want to. I’m going to get bored without you making faces at me the whole time.”

“Okay,” Richie says, and it feels like a fist wraps around Eddie’s heart and fucking squeezes. “Whatever helps, right? For the… the leaping, or whatever.”

“The leaping,” Eddie echoes, and pulls up to a stop next to the pump. He throws open the door and climbs out, without looking at Richie. The guy standing outside the gas station starts toward him, and Eddie lifts a hand. “You need a ride?”

#

Richie doesn’t leave Eddie for, and this is not an exaggeration, eleven days straight.

It’s his longest streak ever without a day off. He’s there as Eddie drives the hitchhiker to Maine, and he’s there when Eddie is a high school teacher for a few days, and he’s there when Eddie has to save his neighbor’s kid from getting hit by a truck. He’s there for the sleepless nights afterwards. Eddie doesn’t know when he has time to eat, let alone shower or sleep or any of that other shit. It’s nice to have him there, but it’s stressful as fuck too.

So in some ways, it’s a relief when Eddie leaps into a surfer, nearly fucking drowns, and finds Stan waiting on the beach, looking unimpressed. “You wiped out,” he says, desert-dry.

“I don’t know how to fucking surf,” Eddie huffs. It’s quiet, because he’s pretty sure he’s dressed like a surfer and would sound insane if anyone heard it, but Stan cracks a smile. “Do you know who I am yet?”

“I have been here exactly as long as you,” Stan says. “I’m just your therapist, I can’t actually help you.”

“That’s what everyone wants their therapist to say,” Eddie mutters, and Stan chuckles quietly. Making Stan laugh always feels like a victory, for reasons that he can’t explain, so Eddie grins. “Wanna go for a walk?”

“It’s a beautiful day in the imaging chamber,” Stan says, and Eddie grins at him. “Yeah, fuck it, why not? A walk and talk, very cinematic. Tell me your burdens and I’ll tell you mine.”

Eddie snorts as they begin ambling along the beach. “No, you won’t.”

“No,” Stan admits. “Technically we have a professional relationship right now.”

“But not always?”

“Not always. If you’d actually remembered me, we would’ve found you another shrink.”

“Monkey’s paw,” Eddie mutters. Stan arches an eyebrow, and he clarifies, “I get to remember you but I don’t get to talk to you.”

“I’d still talk to you.”

“Yeah, but it’s the same way everyone else talks to me. Halfway like I’m a stranger and halfway like I’m their best friend or something.”

“Eddie, I hate to break it to you, but that’s kind of the situation.”

“Yeah, but it’s fucking annoying,” Eddie huffs. Someone gives him a strange look, which he ignores. “Bev was saying the other day that the version of me that you guys remember still exists, but I can’t help but think about that as someone else.”

“For all intents and purposes, right now it is someone else. We think that once you’re back you’ll remember everything.”

“Right,” Eddie says. He does not say that he kind of feels like he’s never going to get back, because he’s pretty sure that shit gets him put on a list or on Stan-watch or something like that. “But it’s still annoying not being able to remember everything. Hey, when’s Richie’s birthday?”

“Classified,” Stan says, and completely ignores the incredulous look that Eddie gives him. “Look, you gotta trust me here, because I know some things are above your pay grade, but that’s an actual state secret. I am just as amazed as you are.”

“Our tax dollars at work, keeping Richie Tozier’s birthday a secret.”

Stan frowns. “He also wasn’t supposed to tell you his last name.”

“He hasn’t told me his last name.”

“Then how do you know it?”

Eddie opens his mouth to answer and then finds abruptly that he can’t. “Did I just say Tozier?”

“Yes, you did.”

“What the fuck?”

“I’ll have to tell Bill about that.” Stan sighs. “Eddie, don’t take this the wrong way, but if you were going to be a pioneer for modern scientific research across half a dozen fields, couldn’t you have done it without getting launched back through time?”

“Believe me, I’d rather be back home with my friends.” He pauses, feeling something thick in my throat. “Stan?”

“Mmm?”

“Were we friends?”

“Of course,” Stan says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “You’re a pain in the ass to go out with for lunch breaks. There was a while where you were trying new diets literally every other week, it was impossible to pick somewhere to go out.”

Eddie grins without quite meaning to. “Fuck you too, Stanley.”

Stan bumps elbows with him, a gesture that does absolutely nothing and means the world. “It’s killing all of us,” he says quietly, in what sounds like a confession. Eddie tilts his head, and he continues, “Richie isn’t on the actual leap team, so he can do whatever he wants, but the rest of us can’t. We don’t get to be friends with you right now, no matter how badly we want to be. We have to be your… your handlers, or whatever. We’re just trying to get you home.”

“Thank you for trying,” Eddie says.

“Oh, don’t thank us. It’s our job. And even if it weren’t, I think Richie would single-handedly become a quantum physics expert if it meant figuring out how to get you home.”

“The man can move heaven and earth for me but I’m not allowed to know his fucking birthday?”

“You could always try and remember it.”

“I did try,” Eddie grumbles. “I said June 29th and he got all weird about it.”

“You said June 29th,” Stan repeats. “Really.”

Eddie frowns. “Are you going to be weird about it too?”

“I’ve never been weird with you about anything,” Stan says, which is a blatant fucking lie. “I just think it’s interesting hearing what you guess.”

“What, are you going to tell me I guessed his fucking zodiac sign wrong?”

“I think both of us know that if anyone here gives a shit about zodiac, it’s Ben.”

“Then what’s so special about June 29th?” Eddie pauses. “Is it your birthday or something? Like, some other important day that I just got mixed up?”

Stan presses his lips into a thin line. Eddie can see the gears turning in his head, the ever-present calculus of what Eddie is and isn’t allowed to know. If he weren’t already talking to himself on a public beach, he would start screaming at Stan to just tell him something already. He’s actually done that a couple times. Stan is the easiest to scream at, because he just takes notes, says something ominous, and then lets Eddie stew for a while before telling him to shut up.

“It’s another important day,” Stan says at last. “And if you remember what it is, you need to let me know.”

“Specifically you? Or specifically not Richie?”

A smile flits across Stan’s face. “Specifically not Richie. But I’m probably the one best equipped to handle it.”

“Well, what day did I go missing?”

“God, I don’t know,” Stan sighs. “December? Sometime in December.. You’ve been gone for two years and… I don’t know, two months or something like that. Maybe three.”

Eddie nods, churning that over in his head. So June 29th isn’t that anniversary. “Is that when my mom died?”

Stan pinches the bridge of his nose. “When were you going to tell me that you remembered your mom?”

“It’s not like I want to remember her!”

“It’s my job as your psychiatrist - and BIll’s job as your neuroscientist, for that matter - to know these things.”

“Fine,” Eddie sighs. “That’s it, though. I know that she was awful and that she died, and I guess I know Richie’s last name. What else do you want?”

“I don’t know,” Stan says thoughtfully. “I’ll send Bill in tomorrow. It’s his job to figure these things out. But Eddie, you have to work with us here. Don’t make this into pulling teeth.”

Eddie wants to say something shitty and sarcastic, but it slips away as soon as he opens his mouth. “Okay,” he says instead, and tries not to think too hard about the look on Stan’s face when he said that it was killing them all to keep their distance. These people are his best friends in the world, and they’re the only people that he has right now. The least he can do is try and help them.

#

Bill shows up the next day with a stack of index cards more than an inch thick. “Pop quiz, Eddie.”

“What the fuck,” Eddie says. He’s halfway through a cup of shitty coffee at an apartment that he’s pretty sure is his, trying to just coast through this particular leap. “Am I about to get graded?”

“We’ve been g-grading you the whole time,” Bill says, deadpan if not for the smirk he’s trying to hide. “You’re failing.”

“I have it on good authority that I’m pioneering scientific research.”

“Oh, all of us are writing research papers about you.”

“I’m the guinea pig?”

“More like a lab rat.”

Eddie groans and plops down on the awful futon. “Fine, okay, hit me.”

In addition to being a neuroscientist, BIll is technically the director of the quantum leap project. But it took Eddie months to figure that out, because absolutely none of the other leads talk about him like he’s in charge of anything. Bill had just been another in a slew of people Eddie had to talk to until one day Ben had called him the boss and disintegrated Eddie’s whole worldview.

It’s just that Bill doesn’t seem… bossy. He seems authoritative, sure, but when he sits down with the flashcards and a serious look, the first thing he says is, “Some of these a-a-are completely fake.”

“What? Why?”

“Rooting out false associations.”

“Like what?”

Bill holds up the first flash card. It says “Richie’s mom.”

Eddie closes his eyes. “Was that your idea or his?”

“I’d call it a collaboration.”

“I barely even remember Richie. Not in any way that counts.” He pauses. “I mean, Stan told you I remembered his last name, right?”

Bill nods. “And your mom,” he says, slightly accusatory, then pauses. “Not in the ‘your mom’ joke way-”

“No, I actually remember her. A little bit.”

“Don’t try too hard,” Bill says dryly. He holds up a new flash card, barely glancing at it. “What’s this?”

Eddie squints. “Betty,” he repeats slowly. “Nothing.”

Bill holds up another flash card. This one says Atlanta.

“I’ve been to Atlanta,” Eddie says slowly. He was there a year ago, back in 2011, but he’s pretty sure that’s not what Bill means. “Does someone live there?”

“A lot of people live in Atlanta.”

“You know, I doubt it’s in your contract to be an asshole.”

Bill grins. “You haven’t read my contract.”

Eddie shakes his head. “Someone we know,” he murmurs. He’s not sure where the quantum leap project is centered, but he’s pretty sure Richie has mentioned New York a couple of times. But he’s been to Atlanta. To someone’s house. “There are a lot of… paintings.”

Bill nods and writes something down. “Next,” he says, and holds up a card that says Southdale. Eddie shakes his head, and he flips to the next card: Marsh.

“Marshmallow,” Eddie says automatically, and then freezes. He can hear laughter in the back of his head, and it sounds familiar. He sucks in a breath. “Dr. Beverly Marsh.”

Bill’s face splits into a giant grin. “That’s a great sign, Eddie,” he says. It should be trite or patronizing, but because it’s Bill, it makes Eddie feel warm inside. “Even if that’s the only one, that’s a big d-d-deal.”

“That won’t be the only one,” Eddie says, with way more confidence than he feels.

Unfortunately, it’s the most solid one. There are a lot of cards: Corcoran, Derry, Abra, Arnette, Blakely, Denbrough, Sonia, Marsten, Sidewinder, Misery, Escalade. Some of them are enough that Eddie starts saying “Oh, that’s-” but there’s never another one where he can finish with that same confidence.

Bill doesn’t seem bothered at all. “This is still much better than I was expecting,” he says gently. “Eddie, you didn’t remember anything at all for t-t-t-two years. We had to tell you your own name. Establishing any kind of recall on your own is a great step.”

Eddie swallows hard. “This is the most frustrating thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“I know the feeling,” Bill says, and Eddie can’t help but snort. “Seriously, Eddie, any progress is good progres. D-d-don’t worry about it.”

“It took me two years to remember my best friend’s last name,” Eddie says flatly. “And right now I’m in Florida, and I barely know my own name. It’s a little hard not to worry.”

Bill shrugs. “Then let us help you worry.”

Eddie sighs and slumps back on the couch. “Fine,” he says, trying not to let it show what a fucking relief that idea is. It’s easy to forget that he’s not alone, even though he’s technically never alone. Which reminds him. “You guys, like, made Richie sleep and take a shower, right? He was here for two weeks.”

“Yeah, Bev and Mikey dragged him out.”

“Can I ask a question that I’m going to get mad at you for not answering?”

“Is this about June 29th?”

“Does everyone know about this?” Eddie demands. “Is there a memo somewhere?”

Bill spreads his hands in front of him like he’s framing a poster. “Warning,” he says, clearly tamping down on a laugh. “This doctor will ask you about a specific day. Whatever you do, d-d-do not answer! All the interns learn it on their first day.”

“Your office politics fucking confound me,” Eddie says, but he’s laughing too. There’s something magnetic about Bill, he can’t help it. “And you can’t tell me Richie’s birthday either?”

“Nope.”

“Can you help me narrow it down?”

“Also no.”

“Did I miss Christmas? Twice?”

Bill shrugs. “You had b-b-b-bigger things to worry about.”

Eddie sighs. “Maybe I’ll be home next Christmas,” he says. Bill gives him an encouraging smile, and Eddie instantly feels like a piece of shit for saying that when he doesn’t remotely believe it. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Okay,” Bill says, but he’s still smiling. “Richie will be back later tonight. Try not to need help before then.”

“You’re a piece of shit,” Eddie says, and Bill just smiles wider. “Thanks.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” Bill says, and takes his leave.

Eddie cleans the Florida surfer’s apartment, because there’s really not much else to do. It’s kind of fun digging through other people’s shit, but more importantly, it gives him a chance to think, to compile information. Bill had said a lot of words, and he knows that some of them were red herrings, but some of them are sticking, and he wants to think about them. Other Eddie, real Eddie, feels closer than ever.

He doesn’t realize Richie’s there until he hears a loud, deeply fucking obnoxious whistle from behind him. “This place definitely got the Eddie Kaspbrak treatment.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie says on autopilot. “A guy can’t clean his apartment?”

“Not your apartment, Eds Spagheds.”

“Mine until it’s not mine anymore,” he points out. “I’m doing this guy a fucking favor, Rich, we both know it.”

“You’re ruining his whole organizational system! He’s going to be so goddamn confused.”

“I’m sure that will be the confusing part, and not the fact that he can’t remember multiple days of his own life.”

“Right,” Richie says, like it’s obvious. “People forget shit they do all the time, but a man’s space? That’s sacred.”

Eddie snorts and turns around to look at him. “You’re a weird one, Tozier.”

The reaction is even better than he was expecting: Richie’s eyes bulge, and he goes completely fucking slack-jawed, just staring at Eddie in disbelief.

“That’s right,” Eddie says smugly. “I remember your last name. You can hold your applause.”

“That’s technically a government secret,” Richie says, but he still sounds distinctly stunned. “How - _how?"_

“Don’t get your hopes up, I barely remember anything else. I failed Bill’s quiz pretty spectacularly. But he says the fact that I remembered anything is a good sign.”

“It’s a great sign,” Richie says fervently. It’s almost too enthusiastic. It’s like Eddie gave Richie the secret to immortality or something, judging by the almost reverent way he’s looking at Eddie. It’s honestly a little uncomfortable. “Congrats, Eds.”

“Thanks,” Eddie says, surprised to find how much he means it. “Hopefully next I’ll be able to remember your mom’s name.”

Richie lets out a surprised laugh. “Bill actually used that card?”

“Did you think he wouldn’t?”

“It’s Bill,” Richie says, like it explains everything. It kind of does. “Hey, how are you celebrating getting back crumbs of your memory?”

Eddie gives Richie his best “you’re-an-idiot” glare. “By cleaning,” he says.

Richie makes a face. “You always did have a weird idea of a celebration.”

“Whatever,” Eddie says, and goes back to the DVD shelf. There are a lot - like, a weird number - of copies of Point Break. “Oh, and apparently I’ve missed two Decembers, so happy belated Hanukkah.”

“I’m not practicing,” Richie says, all but automatic, and then, “Who told you I’m Jewish?”

Eddie pauses. “You should probably tell Bill I remember that too.”

“I will,” Richie says. “Anything else I should know?”

“Not yet,” Eddie says, which is halfway a lie. He doesn’t remember anything new, but suddenly he can picture a table. He knows this table. He’s intimately familiar, although he couldn’t say why. And there’s a silver menorah, way fancier than anything Richie would ever own, sitting on top of it, candles flickering. Eddie knows the menorah too. But he doesn’t celebrate Hanukkah. And he’s not sure why this would mean anything to him. All he knows is that it does.

“Great,” Richie says, completely oblivious to Eddie’s internal turmoil. “I’ll let him know. Later.”

“Later,” Eddie agrees quietly. Richie smiles at him, and a thousand questions Eddie can’t ask flicker through his mind. He forces himself to smile back.

#

For five blessedly boring days, Eddie doesn’t have anything to do. No missing kids. No PTA bake-offs. No murder mysteries. It seems like he’s chosen the most boring possible person to be.

He gets even more visitors than normal. Bill comes back with different flash cards, none of which are any more successful. Stan does another beach therapy session, which he seems to enjoy even though it’s much cloudier. Bev and Ben visit together, and even though Eddie can only talk to one of them at a time, it makes him feel… warm, knowing that they’re both there.

Richie is, of course, there for most of the five days. He’s in higher spirits than ever, probably because of the miracle of Eddie’s memory. This unfortunately means that he’s positively fucking insufferable, but Eddie tolerates it anyways. They watch Point Break together. Eddie tries to go surfing to test muscle memory - good, but not great - and Richie laughs his ass off every time Eddie wipes out. He also stands on the ocean floor, just watching Eddie. It’s super weird. Eddie’s happy that he’s there.

It starts raining on the third day. It keeps raining through the fourth, and the fifth, but the flooding doesn’t start until the sixth. And Eddie is, unfortunately, on the ground floor.

“Is this what you’re supposed to do in a flood?” Ben asks. He’s sprinting up the stairs right alongside Eddie, but he doesn’t sound winded at all. He doesn’t know if Ben is ripped because he constructs giant supercomputers or if it’s just a coincidence, but in this moment, Eddie kind of hates him. “I’ve never been in a flood before, I don’t-”

“Isn’t it your job to look it up?”

“That takes time that you might not have right now.”

Eddie throws open the door to the next story. “Flood warning,” he shouts at the top of his lungs. He heaves in a breath and breaks into a sprint down the hallway. “Get upstairs, it’s flooding fast!”

Ben does not yell flood warning with him, but only because he remembered around the third story that nobody else could hear him. “Maybe you were supposed to stop the flood.”

“You can’t stop a fucking flood,” Eddie pants. He shouts out a warning one more time, pushes into the stairwell at the opposite end of the hallway, and immediately collapses into a heap. “Jesus Christ, aren’t surfers supposed to be in shape?”

“Are you okay?” Ben asks, looking alarmed. “Eddie, you don’t look so good.”

Eddie takes a deep breath, which is hard and actually kind of painful and makes him think that Ben might be right to worry. Shit. “I think something’s wrong,” he says. He wants to say something else, try and crack this mystery, but his brain is busy spinning through Bill’s fucking flash cards, for some reason. The last thing he needs right now are memories.

Fuck, wait, memories. Memories, and things that happen at the worst time, and neural pathways, and-

Eddie looks up at Ben. “I’m about to,” he says, and then he’s not in the stairwell anymore. He blinks rapidly, trying to adjust. “Are you fucking kidding me, you’re doing this now?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have much control either,” says the person in front of Eddie. “Catch your breath. You’re safe.”

Eddie leans his head back. He’s not somewhere that physically exists, but there’s still a wall for him to thud his head against satisfyingly. “Can’t you fucking warn me? Like, at all?”

“Not quite,” the person in front of Eddie says apologetically. “I know it is impossible for you to understand this, but this is a good thing.”

“Is it?”

“Subjectively.”

“Subjective for who?”

“You, depending what you want.”

“What am I supposed to want?” Eddie snaps. It comes out sadder than he intended. “Goddammit.”

“Think about the flash cards,” says the person in front of Eddie. The voice is familiar, but Eddie can’t say why. It’s a feeling he’s getting used to. “You’re going to want a pen and paper.”

“Can you give me one?”

“You won’t be able to take it with you. You don’t physically exist.”

“Can you send me somewhere where I’ll have a pen and paper?”

“I cannot control where you go. But you’re welcome to try?”

Eddie stares. “I thought I couldn’t control where I leap, are you telling me this whole time I could’ve-”

“Control is a strong word,” the person in front of Eddie admits. “But you’re slightly more likely to be somewhere that you want to be if you try.”

“Huh,” Eddie says, and closes his eyes. He’s not sure how much time passes, but he keeps thinking about the flash cards. It’s easier to remember things now - not perfectly, not clearly, but better. There are things that keep floating to the top. Atlanta, with the paintings of birds on the walls. Denbrough, and Bill with his arm around someone both younger and taller than him. A menorah on a table that’s so fucking familiar Eddie wants to scream. It’s so close, so close he could touch it.

“Next time we see each other,” the person in front of Eddie says, “may be the last time. You might want to prepare.”

“What the fuck,” Eddie says, into the air of the empty hotel room. He’s by himself. There’s a suitcase in the corner, and he’s wearing what looks like an incredibly nice evening gown. When he looks in the mirror, there’s mascara streaked down his face. Great. Someone’s having a bad night.

But he can’t think about that. He can deal with whoever he leaped into later. First, he lunges for the notepad and pen resting on the nightstand and starts writing everything he remembers. Uris, Atlanta, Patty, birdwatching, Georgie, brother, mother, holidays, Cadillac. A cacophony of words and half-finished thoughts, things that are the other Eddie’s, that are almost his again-

“Eds,” Richie breathes. When Eddie looks up, Richie is kneeling in front of him, hands hovering on either side of Eddie’s shoulders like he’d been about to try and touch them. “Oh my fucking god.”

Richie looks… well, kind of like a mess. His hair is sticking up in random directions, and his eyes are bloodshot. He’s staring at Eddie with a mixture of relief and desperation.

Eddie swallows. “How long,” he says, heart in his throat.

“Fourteen hours,” Richie says. He sounds fucking wrecked. “Ben said you knew it was coming.”

“I made a lucky guess.”

“Eds,” Richie says, and his voice cracks, and tears spring to Eddie’s eyes for no reason at all. Richie’s hands move in towards his shoulders and go straight through like they always do, but Richie doesn’t brush it off with a joke like normal. This time, his face collapses into something purely miserable. “ _Eddie_.”

“I’m here,” Eddie says desperately. “Richie, I’m right here, I’m-”

“You’re in 1981,” Richie says. “And I’m almost forty years ahead of you. You’re not right here, Eds, you never are.”

“I absolutely fucking am,” Eddie argues. It’s easier to believe that when he’s saying it to Richie, and Richie looks scared, and Eddie doesn’t want that. “Come on, asshole, you can’t get rid of me that easy. I’m figuring out how to get back.”

“Eddie-”

“It’s getting clearer.” He lifts up the notepad, and Richie’s eyes go wide as he takes it in. “I think I’m actually remembering things, Rich, it’s getting better-”

“It’s getting worse!” Richie snaps. “We couldn’t find you for more than half a day. Not here, not anywhere at all.”

“That’s what happens when I remember, dipshit.”

“What are you fucking talking about?”

“Think about it!” Eddie gestures at him. “We had our leap-iversary and then I went missing for ten minutes. We had the whole thing about your birthday and I was gone for an hour. And now that I remembered your last name-”

“You disappear when you try to remember me,” Richie says. It sounds like it’s coming from very, very far away.

Eddie’s heart drops. Fuck. “Rich, come on, I disappear when I try to remember anyone, it’s a good sign-”

“How can this be a good sign?”

“It means I’m closer to coming home.”

“But you stop fucking existing, Eddie, do you understand?”

“I still exist, asshole, I just-”

“Nowhere in the whole world, nowhere in all forty years we have to work with.”

“Richie,” Eddie says desperately. “Richie, fucking look at me.”

Slowly, Richie lifts his head to meet Eddie’s eyes. He looks scared. He looks tired. And behind that, he looks… sad. A deep, deep sadness that pierces through Eddie’s fucking skull.

Eddie swallows. “What if it’s worth it?” he says, barely above a whisper.

Richie shakes his head. “What if it’s not?”

Eddie can’t answer that. There’s no way to answer that.

Richie lets out a breath. “I’m gonna get Bill,” he says, and vanishes without so much as a goodbye.

Eddie stands up and undoes the zipper on the evening gown. He makes his way to the bathroom, slowly, carefully, and turns on the shower as hot and as loud as he can make it. He climbs inside. And then, just because he can, he screams at the top of his fucking lungs.

#

Kitty Pruitt is having a very bad week.

Kitty Pruitt used to be a respected beauty pageant queen; now she’s been laughed out of the last pageant she tried to judge. Kitty Pruitt was happily married; now she’s in the middle of her second divorce. Kitty Pruitt is from Nebraska; Kitty Pruitt currently lives alone in Los Angeles.

Any other day, Eddie would feel bad for her. But unfortunately, Eddie’s also having a pretty bad week, so his reaction to Kitty Pruitt is something much, much worse: she’s his new project. He’s going to fix this woman’s life if it fucking kills him, and it’s definitely going to fucking kill him. 

Unfortunately, everyone seems determined to help Eddie first. Bill comes back with the flash cards. Eddie can point out every single red herring, even if he doesn’t properly remember what all the real cards mean. Neither of them celebrate it. He wonders what Richie told everyone. He wonders if he’s having a fucking breakdown.

“You’d know if you were having a breakdown,” Stan says, which is deeply unhelpful. He also doesn’t seem bothered at all when Eddie calls him a fucking quack. Yet another reason that Stan is the best one to yell at.

Ben comes back and apologizes for not being able to help him, which just makes Eddie feel like shit. But he also helps Eddie look up the best way to steam an evening gown, and tells him more random shit about sports and office gossip. It’s a weird comfort, having someone treat him like normal.

It’s Mike who helps the most with Kitty Pruitt. He researches her, as much as he can, and helps navigate her personal life in the meantime. Together they find a long-lost brother and track down his phone number. Eddie doesn’t call, but he makes sure to leave plenty of notes for the real Kitty Pruitt to find. It feels like a family reunion. Eddie wants a family reunion more than fucking anything.

But Mike also says, just before he leaves, “I think you should do it.”

Eddie frowns. “What?”

“Try and come back.”

Eddie swallows. “You heard about that?”

“We’ve all heard about that,” Mike says gently. “It’s our job to talk about it. Everyone has their opinion, whether they’re telling you or not-”

“Mostly not.”

“Mostly not. I shouldn’t be. But I think you should do it.”

“Richie thinks it wouldn’t be worth it,” Eddie says, the words falling out of his mouth before he can think about them.

Mike shakes his head. “Richie has the most to lose out of any of us,” he says.

The pieces in Eddie’s head begin sliding together. He can feel it happening and he forces himself to look away, to focus on Mike. “I just want to be home,” he says.

“I know,” Mike says, sympathetic. “We want that too.”

“Who thinks I shouldn’t?”

“Bill has this whole spiel about scientific risk and the greater good that he’s going to give you next time he visits. Ben’s worried. Stan thinks you need to think about it before you try.”

“Mike,” Eddie says, voice raw, “all I’ve done is think about it.”

Mike gives him a careful, brittle smile. “Don’t tell me before you go. Richie nearly throttled Ben when he said what happened last time.”

Eddie laughs. “I’d like to see that.”

“It’s not nearly as funny as you’re imagining,” Mike warns, but his smile is a little warmer. “Be careful, Eddie.”

“You too,” Eddie says, and Mike disappears.

Bev is there fifteen seconds later. “Hi,” she says, sounding out of breath. “You’re going to do it, right?”

He scoffs. “Of course I’m going to do it,” he says, and he realizes it’s true as he says it. He was always going to do it.

“Do you want to talk to Richie first?”

“Does he want to talk to me?”

“He always wants to talk to you,” Bev says, just a touch chastising. “He’s worried.”

“But I shouldn’t warn him, should I?”

“No, I don’t think you should.”

Eddie bites his lip. “It’s going to be longer this time,” he warns her. “I can tell.”

“We have a lot of experience with Richie-wrangling,” Bev answers dryly. “Don’t you worry about us. If this goes right then you’re going to be there to help with the fallout.”

“And if it goes wrong?”

She gives him a sunny smile. “Then you’re never going to have to worry about anything again.”

Eddie barks out a laugh. “Jesus,” he says, and Bev grins back at him. “Dr. Marsh, it’s been a pleasure.”

“Dr. Kaspbrak,” Bev says, eyes warm. “Is there anything I can do before you go?”

“Can I get a hint to kickstart the memories?”

Bev hums thoughtfully. “Ask me a question and I’ll tell you the answer.”

“Any question?”

“Any question at all.”

A billion questions flash through Eddie’s mind at once before he lands on, cautiously: “His birthday is in March, right?”

Beverly grins. “Right,” she says. “Good luck.”

She disappears. Eddie closes his eyes, says “Bye, Rich,” and then he disappears too.

#

The person in front of Eddie says, “Tell me what you’ve learned.”

Eddie opens his eyes. It looks like he’s standing in a bar. “Is this a real place?”

“Yes,” the person in front of Eddie answers. “And no. It’s somewhere for you to rest for a while.”

“It’s going to take a lot longer this time.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why does that happen? And why is it so much longer for them than for me?”

“It’s difficult to explain.”

“I’ve been told I’m very smart.”

The person in front of Eddie, who is not really a person and he can tell that now, smiles. “You are,” says Maturin, “but I’m afraid you built me to be smarter.”

“Great,” Eddie says, even as pride swells somewhere deep in his chest. He made this computer, and now it’s saving him. “Fucking fantastic. This doesn’t make any sense, you know that? If you’re a computer linked into my brain this should be instantaneous.”

“Is this what you really want to talk about right now?”

“I don’t know.” Eddie sits down at a stool in front of the bar and pillows his head in his arms. The counter’s not sticky, because it isn’t real, and he doesn’t want it to be sticky. “Was it this easy the whole time? This was all I had to do? Stop running away and remember?”

“Nothing about that is easy. Not for you, and not for him.”

Eddie closes his eyes. It’s been twenty-seven months now, and he’s spent those twenty-seven months in different times and places. And Richie has spent those twenty-seven months with him, waiting, telling jokes, learning and explaining quantum physics and baseball and how to make a fucking cheesecake because he thought one of those things would be enough to bring Eddie home. And he was wrong. Being someone else was never going to bring him home.

“I wish I’d known,” he says, but his voice comes out smaller than he means to. For a moment he’s embarrassed, but then he just sighs. Shit, he doesn’t have to lie, who’s Maturin going to tell? “I mean - I definitely wouldn’t have believed it at first, so it was probably a good idea to keep it quiet for a while, but they should’ve told me at some point. Shouldn’t they?”

“Maybe,” Maturin says, and sets a glass on the counter. Eddie doesn’t bother looking at what it is before he takes a drink. It tastes like nothing at all, and he drinks again. “Or maybe not. It is impossible to say what decision would have been better. You know that.”

“Yeah, yeah, string theory, whatever.” Eddie pauses. He can actually remember some of the project’s quantum physics now. He could never do that before. “It’s working?”

Maturin nods, a motion that looks strange and inhuman. “If you decide to go back, you will remember fully.”

Eddie shoots upright. “If?”

“You are not being forced back.”

“I can decide if I want to go?”

“You may decide.”

“Why would I say no?”

Maturin motions behind Eddie. He turns around and freezes, breath catching in his throat.

The bar, empty just seconds ago, is completely packed. And Eddie recognizes every single person. Trisha, the missing girl from the woods, is sitting at a table and coloring with crayons, and the kid from Ludlow that Eddie scooped away from a speeding truck is sitting with her. Kitty Pruitt and a man who has to be her older brother are drinking together at the bar. The hitchhiker from Boston and his son are in one corner. Holly Gibney, the private detective, sits in a corner and watches them all. The bar seems impossibly big, and Eddie could name every single person inside it. They all look happy.

“I did this?” Eddie says faintly. “All of them?”

“All of them,” Maturin says. “You, and Richie, and everyone else involved with the project. Although they would argue that you deserve most of the credit.”

“I do deserve most of the credit,” Eddie says, more on autopilot than anything. His eyes are still darting around the room. “So, what, I can go back now or… or never?”

“Not never,” Maturin allows. “It’s possible that you could return to this point.”

“But it’s also possible that this is my only chance to go back.”

“That’s correct.”

Eddie closes his eyes. He thinks about Bill and scientific risk. He thinks about Bev saying, confident and quiet, “I’ll see you again one day.” He thinks about Richie. God, he thinks about Richie.

“Will someone else leap back eventually to take my place and help people?” he says, and then lifts a hand. “Wait, I don’t want to know the answer to that.” He pauses, thinking. “I mean - only tell me if the answer is definitely yes, and otherwise I don’t want to know.”

“Very well,” Maturin says, with what sounds like it could be a smile. “Have you made your decision?”

“I have,” Eddie says. “I don’t think it was ever really a decision.”

“Perhaps not,” Maturin allows. “How long do you wish to stay here?”

Eddie turns around and leans back against the counter, watching the people move around him. Nobody looks at either him or Maturin. “A little while longer,” he murmurs. “Just- just to see.”

He can’t say if he stays for minutes or hours. Everyone fades away, one by one: Holly in her corner, Trisha with her crayons, Kitty with her whiskey. Eddie keeps thinking about the flash cards, and how he remembers every single one now. Eddie keeps thinking about Richie.

At last, the bar is empty. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and stands to face Maturin. His hands are shaking, and he balls them into fists, trying to keep them still. “I’m ready.”

Everything fades away until it’s just the two of them standing there, looking at each other. Maturin smiles. “I want you to know that It has been a pleasure working with you, Dr. Kaspbrak.”

“Likewise.” Eddie pauses. “But don’t take it the wrong way when I say I hope it never happens again.”

Maturin laughs. It sounds human.

Eddie remembers building this computer, spending hours with his head bent low over blueprints with Mike and Ben. He remembers hoping against hope against hope that one day it could be anything approaching human. He thinks that now, Maturin is beyond human. He thinks that’s a good thing.

“Thank you for giving me a choice,” Eddie says softly.

“Tell me what you’ve learned, Dr. Kaspbrak,” says Maturin. “Tell me the key to going home.”

Eddie closes his eyes. “June 29,” he says. “It’s the day Richie and I got married."

  
  
  
  
  


#

  
  
  
  
  


Nothing happens.

Or at least, it doesn’t feel like anything happens. It doesn’t even feel like he’s somewhere new. Eddie just stands there, eyes squeezed shut, until he decides that it’s been long enough that something either must’ve happened or gone wrong.

“Uh,” Eddie says, just in case. “Maturin?”

There’s no response. Eddie cracks an eye open, and then reels backwards so hard he falls on the ground.

He’s not in the bar anymore. He’s in a room that he remembers intimately, even though if someone had asked him yesterday he couldn’t have said a damn thing about it. There’s a whole other set of memories that had been holes in his brain, and they’re back. He knows they’re back.

Eddie is sitting in the middle of the project accelerator.

“Holy shit,” Eddie says. His heart is in his throat. He lifts his hands in front of his face to make sure they’re his hands, and then whimpers. There’s a wedding ring on his finger. A missing piece he hadn’t even realized he was missing. He wants to fucking cry.

Instead he swallows hard and stands up. He has something he needs to do first.

He stumbles a little as he goes toward the door. God, he’s not used to his own body, he’s going to have to do so much physical therapy to get back to normal. But it’s him, it’s him in the same clothes he was wearing when he disappeared. It’s him in his own body again. It’s him and everyone will be able to see it.

His hands are shaking so hard he almost can’t open the door, but he takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay, okay, let’s fucking go, come on. Come on, open the fucking door, Eddie, open the-”

The door swings open. Eddie looks up on instinct.

“Holy shit,” says Ben. His toolbox clatters to the ground. “Holy shit, Eddie?”

“Wait,” Eddie says, and reaches out and tentatively pokes Ben in the middle of the chest. Ben just stares at him, gaping, as Eddie’s finger does not go through him, because he’s not a hologram, he’s standing in front of Eddie, in person, in the fucking flesh. “Oh, my god, it fucking worked.”

“ _Eddie?"_ Ben says again, voice breaking. “I don’t- it’s been three days, we thought you-”

“Three days,” Eddie repeats. Shit, he hadn’t realized it would be that long. And he can guess exactly what everyone thought happened. “Fucking shit, dude, Ben, it worked.”

“It’s so fucking good to see you,” Ben gasps, and then he lunges forward and wraps Eddie in a tight hug. “God, Rich is gonna lose his mind-”

“Richie,” Eddie says, and suddenly it’s all he can think. It’s like he’s drowning. “Where-”

“Imaging chamber,” Ben says. He steps away, but his hands linger on Eddie’s shoulders, and he’s still staring in disbelief. “Do you- there’s no delicate way to ask this, but you didn’t really remember anything until-”

“I remember everything,” Eddie breathes. It’s true. He can tell it’s true. “All of it. Ben fucking Hanscom.”

Ben squeezes his shoulders and beams. “I have to sound the alarm and let everyone know. But I can make sure it takes a minute to get everyone to the chamber.”

Eddie laughs wetly. “Thank you,” he says.

“Welcome back,” Ben whispers, and steps out of the way. It takes Eddie all of half a second to sprint out and tear past him, and he can hear Ben laughing behind him as he goes.

He still knows the way by heart. It’s funny how that works. Through the control chamber, past all the startled interns. He thinks he sees Stan at one point, but doesn’t bother stopping. If it was really Stan, he’d know where Eddie is going.

Eddie skids to a stop in front of the door to the imaging chamber and forces himself to take a deep, cleansing breath. Richie is on the other side of that door. Real, non-hologram Richie, for the first time in two years.

His hands aren’t shaking anymore. He throws the door open.

Richie’s at the console with his back to Eddie. “You’re early, Micycle,” he says, without even so much as looking up. He sounds like he’s typing fast. Eddie’s heart fucking hurts. “Bev made sure I got lunch, she basically force-fed me potato chips, so I’m good for a little while longer.”

Eddie pulls the door shut, heart racing. “Is it someone’s job to make you take a shower?” he says.

Richie whips around so fast that his glasses tilt on his face. He fixes them frantically, staring at Eddie in pure, unadulterated shock. His mouth opens and then closes a couple times, like a fish, and Eddie loves him, Eddie loves him deep in his bones, how did he ever forget?

“Hi, Richie,” he says. His voice cracks in the middle. He doesn’t care. “You look like shit.”

“Eddie,” Richie whispers. Eddie takes a step deeper into the room, but Richie throws up his hands frantically. “Wait, stop, you’re - you could be a hologram, we’re still in the imaging chamber, I can’t assume-”

“Then come here,” Eddie pleads. “Richie, come on-”

“Or maybe I finally fucking lost it,” Richie murmurs, but he’s lowering his hands. Eddie tries to glare at him, and he just half-shrugs. “Any minute now I’m gonna wake up on Stan’s couch or something. If this is a breakdown it was worth it.”

“You’re so fucking stupid,” Eddie says tearfully. “You’re so goddamn-”

“You gonna prove it?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and turns off the lights in the chamber. Richie’s eyes go wide. “Ever think of that, dipshit?”

He barely has time to brace himself before Richie barrels into him. His hands come up automatically, muscle memory, one wrapping around Richie’s waist and the other winding into his hair. Richie lets out a choked-off sob, and Eddie has to close his eyes. “I’m here,” he says, but he can barely say it through his tears, can barely hear it over the sound of Richie crying. “Hear that, asshole? I’m right here.”

“Eddie,” Richie gasps, face pressed into Eddie’s shoulder at an angle that has to be hell on his neck. “Eddie, fucking shit, Eds, Eddie, _Eddie-_ ”

“Sorry it took so long,” Eddie says, and Richie just squeezes him even tighter. “But hey, I finally remember your birthday.”

“Eddie,” Richie says, muffled, “I’m kind of having a moment here, could you be quiet for a second?”

Eddie grins like a fucking madman. “You got a problem, Mr. Kaspbrak-Tozier?”

Richie draws back enough to stare at him. He looks like a goddamn mess, with tears down his face and his hair awkwardly matted where it’d been pressed against Eddie’s cheek. “What did you just say?” he says, but there’s something like hope rising on his face.

“Yeah, so turns out-” Eddie disentangles his left hand to wiggle his fingers, flashing the wedding ring, and then settles his palm back on Richie’s cheek as Richie gapes at him. “Being back in the flesh means my brain isn't Swiss cheese anymore.”

“What the fuck,” Richie whispers. “God, Eds, that- this is amazing, but it’s- you started talking about our anniversary and you didn’t even know, how can we be sure-”

“I know now,” Eddie insists. There are tears threatening to spill again, and he digs his fingers into the fabric of Richie’s shirt, willing himself not to cry. “Your birthday is March 7th, and we got married on June 29th, and somehow despite the fact you have the physical coordination of a baby zebra you’ve never broken a bone, and you started crying right before you proposed to me because you’re an insane person. And you always said we should get a cat because you know I like them even though you want a dog, and you practically lived in this room for two years because of me. You were always my way home, Richie. It was always going to be you.”

Richie takes in a stuttering gasp, a noise Eddie’s going to hear when he closes his eyes every day for the rest of his life. “I love you so much, Eds,” he says, and before Eddie can answer Richie surges forward and presses his mouth against Eddie’s.

It is, by all objective measurements, an awful kiss. They’re both crying and so everything tastes a little salty, and it’s all much wetter than a kiss should be. Richie keeps making these noises that sound like genuine distress, and Eddie hasn’t kissed anybody like this in a long, long time. It’s messy and warm in all the wrong ways, and Richie is squeezing Eddie’s hips so hard it actually fucking hurts.

It’s the best thing Eddie’s ever done.

After a minute Eddie breaks away to bury his face in Richie’s chest. Richie wraps his arms around him immediately, in a move that feels familiar and sweet. He can’t imagine living without this. He can’t believe he ever forgot this.

“We’re going to use up all our vacation time,” Richie says. Eddie laughs against his chest. “No, I’m serious! You haven’t had a day off in two years, I think that means that you are required by law to retire forever.”

“You gonna bring that up with Bill?” Eddie says. It’s muffled by Richie’s awful, ugly fucking shirt, and on instinct he pushes his face even more firmly against Richie’s.

“Fucking right I’m going to,” Richie says vehemently, arms tightening around him. “What, you think he’s gonna say no? I’m more worried that you’re only gonna make it till Thursday morning before you start going stir crazy.”

Eddie pauses. “What day is today?”

He can feel Richie’s grin against the top of his head. “Wednesday.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie says, and Richie holds him even tighter. “It’s going to be Monday at the earliest-”

“Not even as a joke, Eds my love,” Richie says cheerfully. “I will tie you to the bed if I have to.”

“Oh, great, they’re tying each other to the bed,” Bev says from outside. Eddie doesn’t bother moving, but he can hear the door opening slightly. “Richie, is it safe to look?”

“He’s never safe to look at,” Eddie mumbles into Richie’s chest. There’s a quiet chorus of laughter outside, and Eddie relaxes. “Five more minutes?”

“We have t-t-to talk eventually,” Bill warns him.

“Yeah, and the rest of us want hugs too,” Mike adds, which gets a murmur of agreement.

“Wait your turn,” Richie says easily. “You heard the man, five more minutes. And by five, he means forty.”

“I mean five.”

“He means twenty.”

“Richie, I fucking swear-”

“He means ten.”

“Oh my god, you never stop,” Eddie sighs, and everyone breaks into relieved laughter behind him. It feels familiar. Eddie wants to stay here for the rest of his life. “Fine, ten more minutes and then we can talk shop.”

The door closes behind them, and Richie lets out a sigh of relief. “Jackasses,” he says, with immeasurable fucking fondness in his voice. “You have to know I’m not letting you go for at least an hour, right?”

“Can we at least sit on the floor?”

“Eds, baby,” Richie says, and Eddie makes a positively embarrassing noise in the back of his throat. Richie grins at him, dazzling and wide, and for the first time it feels like everything is going to be completely okay. “You think I lived in this room for two years and slept on the floor?”

“Yes,” Eddie says bluntly, and Richie throws back his head and laughs. “Who made you get a mattress?”

“Stan practically dragged me to a warehouse.” Richie motions with his head, and Eddie glances over to see a mattress, a suitcase, and a scattered mess of personal belongings. “If we were careful we figured you’d never see it.”

“Please tell me you went home sometimes.”

“This was home,” Richie says quietly. Eddie looks at him in surprise, and Richie takes the opportunity to drag the pair of them over to the mattress. He’s being so careful with Eddie, so gentle, and meanwhile Eddie can’t get his hands to unfist from Richie’s shirt. “It was as close as I could get to you.”

“Jesus,” Eddie mumbles, and Richie helps him settle down on the mattress. Eddie ends up straddling Richie’s lap, still clutching his shirt. He presses their foreheads together as Richie’s arms wind around his waist. “Well, I’m back now, and I’m not sleeping on a mattress in the imaging chamber. We’re going to our fucking house.”

“Yeah,” Richie agrees. There’s a brightness to his eyes that Eddie knows is tears, and a strained note to his voice that Eddie knows they’re going to have to talk about at some point. But he’s still looking at Eddie like he can’t believe he’s here, like Eddie is a fucking miracle. Eddie kind of feels like a fucking miracle. “Welcome home, Eds.”

“Welcome home,” Eddie echoes faintly. It’s a little nonsensical considering that Richie never left, but Richie still grins at him like he understands.

Eddie settles against his chest and closes his eyes. And he knows that when he opens them, Richie will still be there.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on Tumblr/Twitter - I'm @waveridden on both.


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